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Religion and Science.

Do you believe science and religion can intersect within someone's life? Or do you believe the two are completely incompatible? Personally, if someone chooses to have both religion and science in their life then the two subjects must be separated. Science for the material and physical world. Religion for moral support of ethical questions.

What's your opinion? 🙂

randaghostie 4 Mar 7
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32 comments

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10

"Religion for moral support of ethical questions"? Excuse me while I go & kill my children for being rude to me.

I meant more stuff like the meaning of life, not being a moral human being.

@randaghostie Ok, go ahead & explain how the buybull teaches us the meaning of life.

@GoldenDoll I don't think he does because he doesn't exist. For people who believe, he gives them meaning for life and guidance on ethical and morality questions. You're mentally ill if youre gonna go kill yoir kids for being rude to you. But anyway, that's what religion does for people. I feel like you're missing my whole point here in this post but alright

@randaghostie Yep, I can't see your point.

@GoldenDoll I am also having great difficulty trying to ascertain any "ethical questions" value from ancient barbaric works of self-contradictory literature that often also conflicts with reality. Perhaps stories about how to treat your slaves (OK to beat them only if they don't die right away) or kill and burn your young daughter as a sacrifice for Yehweh because Yehweh enjoys the smell of burnt meat are the lessons religions offer us "moral support for ethical questions?" But there are other religions other then Christian/Jewish. . . We could go to other religions for ethical question such as should a woman be allowed to ask a question in church (answer: No.) (oops, that's Christian again.) How about lesson's on how to beat your wife? That's in a holy book. (the guide to religious morality)

5

To many believers and hardline sceptics, they are incompatible, simply because of the incompatibility of the claims made by holy books, and the contradictory accounts that the scientific method has revealed. If one accepts the Bible as literally true, one cannot embrace evolution, the Big Bang, the Old Earth, adaptation, heliocentricity, the photon model of light or most of the other core theories of the sciences. If you're completely sceptical and only accept things based on evidence, you can't view anything religion says as valid, because none of it really stands up to scrutiny in a meaningful manner.

The only way in which they can be reconciled is to be a wishy-washy deist or vague theist that sees holy books as merely metaphorical, more spiritual guides than literal accounts, then see God as some kind of prime mover. There are still issues with this, but they take more unpacking than the glaring problems with the two extremes.

"Wishy-washy deist"[?] My avatar was the antithesis of 'wishy-washy.'

4

The only way to maintain both at the same time and also maintain sound mind, is to cherry pick both to great degrees and ignore anything that contradicts, which is a hell of a lot to ignore. I think people should really consider making truth paramount. If you do that, science is the only game in town capable of living up to those standards.

3

Religion has two major components, though often disguised as one. On one hand, it describes a view of our universe - how it came about and how it works. That part is clearly incompatible with science. In fact, there is not one iota of new knowledge in the Bible. The second part is that it tells one how to live. One can argue that part can be compatible with science because science does not tell us how to live. However, the advice from religion is often based on what adherents think are truths from God, and are outdated and subject to our revision. As such some of the morals are not compatible with what we now know. There is no reason why we cannot have an ethical system devoid of the myths and fairly tales.

Geoff Level 5 Mar 7, 2018
3

It takes a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to hold both.

3

Science and religion are completely incompatible. I don't believe anyone who believes any kind of religious nonsense can separate the two enough to be credible.

@WizardBill yup, instead of being intellectually honest they adjust their beliefs to cling on to them at all costs.

I agree but it is strange that both religion and science use many of the same processes like observation and making conclusions ( or at least the pastor does - the rest are sheep).This is the reason they appear to overlap, and why religionists feed us pseudo science instead. Many of the conclusions reached by religion are kept rigid by the unfeeling conservatives and have lost the relevances of a thousand years ago

2

It depends largely on the science in question. Sociology, psychiatry, and the other soft sciences in general, yes and without, for the most part, any conflict at all.

Astrophysics, physics, paleontology, and other harder sciences, it becomes problematic if not in total conflict. That doesn't mean there aren't hardcore believers working in those fields, but it does mean there is a lot of mental gymnastics being performed to make it through the day and those who publish must be careful in what and how they publish. Lots of cognitive dissonance.

Science may refer to a discipline of study, or to a method. The findings in any of the sciences, hard or soft, must rely on data, repeatability, falsifiability and rigor if they are to endure. Religion eschews evidentiary reasoning, and very often appeals to the unscientific absurdity of miracle. Nearly every major religion has been founded upon a miracle, which is to say, a lie, and thus nearly every major religion is, on its face, incompatible with science.

@pnullifidian -- The question was not presented as whether science and religion can coexist but whether a person can practice a science while still maintaining their religiosity. These are two very different questions with entirely different answers.

@evidentialist Agreed. Please refer to my previous response to the question. Cheers.

2

Ones a fareytail and the other is reality. it answers itself really.

2

The 2 are incompatible. One is the search for knowledge throw evidence and the other is belief with out evidence.

2

If you have a religion, you would have to believe that there are intersections since you believe that your religion is real. However, without any kind of proof, all these intersections are hypothetical.

1

Religion is a dead end....nothing new will ever come of it
But Science is always expanding ...our knowledge of the world grows every day through the power of Science.

1

Science is it for me. There is no room for religion. I do not see how someone with a scientific world view can also believe in religion.

1

Actually no,I have a couple of friends one is a Dr and the other is his assistant,they teach 100's of up and coming Dr's at Virginia tech university,they fascinate me,I was talking to his assistant and she believes in Noah ark but thinks radio 14 carbon dating is bullshit,I had to just walk away at that moment. Lol

I agree, that's the only sane thing to do. Most of these folks seem to have identified with their religion to the detriment of their ability to reason for themselves.

I hope I will always keep the ability to change my mind if presented with overwhelming evidence. Even about trump... No, let's not be totally naive here...

1

Morality, I think, as being sourced from religion/spirituality is moot.

If I consider that the meaning of life is to ensure the survival of our species through reproduction, by breathing, eating, avoiding being eaten, and enriching our minds with the arts and sciences so that it evolves as much as our other muscles, then I have to also accept that morality is borne out of societal needs. I believe in those two facts.

1

It worked for Gregor Mendel and Isaac Newton. Now, whether their science worked because of their faith or despite it is another matter.

1

I see them as inconpatible, on a superficial basis they may live along side one another but when push comes to shove you either have a faith in make believe or you seek out fact through critical thought and reasoning

1

The issue is religion deals in absolutes which are set in stone before the science was done. And that will always be true because science is continuously changing and refining.

Changing science should impact moral support of ethical questions. Currently, there is a debate on sexual and gender identity. The science supports a spectrum rather than a binary. Many religions choose to ignore the science and insist on the traditional binary roles. We make moral decisions based on our understanding.

Seems like you need to choose.

0

There are many highly respected Scientists who are quite religious...What sets them apart from quackery is being able to seperate the two. They don't let Religion into their Scientific work and they don't try to Explain their Religion with Science.

0

The problem with religion for me, when it comes to moral support or ethical guidance, is that I cannot bring myself to trust those important aspects of my life to a non-existent being. The funny way of saying is: I believe I am god because every time I thought I was talking to god I was really just talking to myself. The serious way of saying it is that my guidance comes from within and starts by placing above all the respect of myself and just below that, the respect for others.

0

Ya they don't mix at all i delieve! Religion is very plyable and they make it whatever they want, while sience is facts and solid truths!! I am all about sience!!

0

"Religion for moral support of ethical questions." ???????? Are you in the wrong site?

If you read what I wrote, i say that If someone chooses to believe in both, they have to separate the two. Is that not clear or can you read?

Precisely what I said: The problem with religion for me, when it comes to moral support or ethical guidance, is that I cannot bring myself to trust those important aspects of my life to a non-existent being. The funny way of saying is: I believe I am god because every time I thought I was talking to god I was really just talking to myself. The serious way of saying it is that my guidance comes from within and starts by placing above all the respect of myself and just below that, the respect for others.

0

Yes to both questions.

0

I cannot figure that one out.faith or science I believe no body can say.

0

Advanced enough science would appear to be magic to any people not able to understand it. (Paraphrased)

It is a given to me that any truth found in religion/spirituality is of necessity true scientifically. How could it be otherwise?

Granted, others may compartmentalize those subjects, but I'm unable to silence my "devil's advocate" brain long enough to latch onto the illogical mess that religion is formed of.

0

I am not convinced by examples of esteemed individuals who appeared more or less equally committed to the scientific method and religious faith. They’ve either compartmentalized their minds or they’ve made compromises. They’ve either allowed two different operating systems, like Windows and Mac, to co-exist, so long as they didn’t try to boot up both at the same time, or they’ve mollified their faith or their reason in such a way that one or the other, or both, are effectively adulterated.

Victor Stenger said it well, “Science and religion are fundamentally incompatible because of their unequivocally opposed epistemologies — the separate assumptions they make concerning what we can know about the world.” And more than a century earlier, the Great Agnostic of the 19th century, Robert Green Ingersoll made this observation: “There is an ‘irrepressible conflict’ between religion and science, and they cannot peaceably occupy the same brain nor the same world.”

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